


Holding On

by rjn



Category: Magnum P.I. (TV 2018)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-04
Updated: 2020-12-04
Packaged: 2021-03-10 01:47:35
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,430
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27876318
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rjn/pseuds/rjn
Summary: Thomas is just starting to look more often before he leaps. Rick prefers a freefall. TC wishes they'd just use the goddamn stairs. A scene from an exfil.
Comments: 11
Kudos: 45





	Holding On

It’s not the blood that worries him, it’s the sight of Rick losing his grip on the gun. In all their time together, TC can’t remember ever having seen _that_ before. Flames, flooding, hypothermia, shrapnel wounds… nothing catastrophic could ever loosen his grip to his lifeline, his tool of the trade, his _raison d'être_. So TC sees Rick go down and the Heckler (don’t get TC started on the assault rifles of dubious origins) swinging loose, and it’s nothing but icy cold dread in the pit of his stomach.

Thomas and Rick hit the fence at full speed, leaping and latching-on midway off the ground. They were plus/minus 500 yards away according to the rangefinder, but TC would be able to cover them on the approach for the last half. The first bit, though, all he could do was watch.

They’d prepared for the razor wire as much as possible. A combination of Kevlar and improvised body armour, gloves with chainmail palms, and they should have been able to scale the fence in the blind spot, relatively unscathed, where nobody would be crazy enough to try to beat the fence.

I mean, that’s what they were counting on. Thomas’s go-to mission strategy has always been to blue-sky a bunch of tactics that won’t work, to figure out what the specific limitations are, and then to exploit the fact that through sheer force of will, those limitations won’t apply to him and his merry band of misfits. _So crazy it might just work_ , is a tactical prerequisite for Magnum. Batshit crazy.

Rick loves it anyways. He’d follow Thomas to the ends of the earth and jump into space on the other side. And that’s a joke, but ain’t it also just the truth? That if one of Rick’s friends told him the world was flat, he’d go along with it? “ _Then I guess we’re gonna fall off.”_

Because Thomas’s damage is the quiet festering dangerous sort, and he’s starting to let people in bit by bit, but Rick just lets his damage hang out there like a mess for everyone to see. _“I’m gonna get so drunk tonight, TC, you need to keep me away from open flame.”_

It’s about expectations, really. Thomas will throw himself off the building knowing full well his freaky kind of superhero magic will let him catch on to a railing or he’ll safely bounce off an awning like a cartoon character. Stupid goddamn Orville will make the leap just hoping someone else will survive to clean up the mess. And how the hell did TC wind up the only one left alive with enough sense to take the stairs? Fucking hell, Nuzo. It’s too much for one man.

So TC keeps it in gear while the Super Smash Brothers hit the fence at full tilt and scramble. Thomas is over first. No surprise there. Rick was older and fatter even when he was younger and thinner. He’s only just easing an arm over the knifey razory bits when Thomas is halfway down on the outside. TC watches helplessly from five hundred yards out. Because they couldn’t have run something like this on the drawing board, but now, in the field, he sees the physics for what it is.

Thomas, halfway down the fence, jumps. It’s not so high that a horseshoe-assed superhero like him couldn’t stick the landing. His rapid liftoff sends the fence springing back so hard TC can feel the twanging over the sound of his rotors.

The wire catches Rick square around the face or neck. Somewhere vital.

There’s a muffled cry over the comms, there’s a spurt of blood, the Heckler slips out of Rick’s hands and he goes tumbling over the fence. Small mercies, he lands on the outside, but there’s no way he’s going to be able to get up and run to—okay, never mind. Thomas is instantly there, somehow. He grabs Rick by the vest and throws him stumbling forward and then Rick is up and running ragged along the mud track outside of the fence.

In the complete wrong direction.

Thomas is so much faster now, that he’s halfway to the chopper before he looks back and by then Rick is deep in the shit, hidden by foliage. Cover that will protect him from their pursuers when they finally find the breach, but that also makes it impossible for Thomas to find him.

TC curses so loud his headset vibrates. This whole goddamn thing is so fucking stupid. Fine. He’ll go scrape Rick off the ground and drag him along if it’s the last thing he does, and one day it probably will be.

There’s time to think, as he’s running, that all of this was for, what? A damsel in distress? A fellow vet? An innocent kid exploited by cruel underworld forces, etcetera, etcetera? A combo of all that, usually. It’s always up to them, TC supposes, because nobody but Thomas and Rick and him are quite so specifically damaged, quite so openly wounded and sensitive that they can feel every stray molecule of needy air moving across the island.

Thomas passes TC, running the opposite direction, _away from_ the helicopter and the surprise and confusion on his face is priceless. TC hopes like hell they get to where he can imitate it for laughs later. Thomas gets it, though. The best thing is to swap responsibilities. His job is to get to the bird and keep it safe and ready to go until TC can collect their stray parts.

Rick is not far from where TC last saw him. Whatever fear and adrenalin powered this far along has abandoned him. There’s a lot of blood. The only hint of the safety glasses that they’d worn into the compound is a shattered piece of shatterproof plastic hanging from the neck opening of Rick’s vest.

_Jesus Christ. Anything but that…_

TC has to tackle him, because despite the fact that the ebb of adrenalin and loss of blood has slowed him, Rick is still fighting. It’s a good sign, at least. TC goes full bear-hug defence and when Rick keeps struggling, he puts him down harder than he’d intended, but at least it stops him.

Of course, once they’re on the ground, Rick panting and heaving under him, TC can hear the rising crescendo of gunfire.

And then:

“TC?”

Tentative, but not unsure, because of course Rick can’t see what’s happening, but he’s deeply familiar with the feeling of being body slammed by his best friend.

“It’s bad, huh?” he adds. Desolate. Resigned. It has to be _so bad_ for TC to be out of the cockpit.

He doesn’t bother to answer, just scrubs a cupped hand over Rick’s face, clearing away some blood. Rick is making a panicked whimpering and wheezing sound that is so unlike his usual smarmy bullshit, that TC wants to scream.

He forces himself to look. There’s a gash across Rick’s forehead, curving to slice through the end of an eyebrow. Deep, seeping, but it’s not what they feared.

“It’s not your eyes,” he says, and when Rick doesn’t stop flailing, he grabs him by the front of his tac vest and shakes him, hard.

“It’s not your eyes, Orville. Okay?”

Rick goes still.

“Okay,” he says. “Okay.”

And he’s visibly steeling himself for the next steps, certain he can manage anything if his eyes are going to be okay, even though TC is far more concerned about the blood soaking down Rick’s left sleeve, coming from somewhere around his armpit in a worrying volume.

TC hauls them to their feet. He takes stock of their position and sets a course through the brush. Slower going, but safer. Hidden. They’d be sitting ducks in the wide open at the speed they’re moving. Rick is getting heavier by the second, and TC is all but carrying him by the time they make the clearing.

Thomas sees them coming and jumps out to take Rick. He lifts him into the back and TC jumps into his seat and then it’s all controls and muscle memory and a pat on the shoulder from Thomas that means _Go. Go. Go._

When they’re safely in the air and he glances behind, he sees it. Thomas is checking that they’re belted in properly and he’s getting down to first aid. But Rick’s hand is the reassurance, closed around the gun, finger poised more or less on the trigger guard. For a second back there, he’d let go. But he’d got it back.

TC never doubted him.


End file.
